Growing Super: Chapter 7

Too bad I can’t find any mesh, or any suitable wire, Jack thought. I could have made a backpack like that thing that Doctor guy has, where it’s bigger on the inside.

He looked at the line of cubes again. Jack doubted that he would be able to push the largest one far, let alone pick it up. But if all he had to do is push it a couple of feet, he could do it. A portal could make it possible.

Jack woke Fido up, and sent it off to find the things his design called for. When the device was done, it would look like a bulky watch with the ability to travel anywhere. He started thinking about the technicalities of it and how he would build it. He blocked out the rest of the world while he was think but was brought back when a clanking noise sounded. Jack looked up to find Fido sitting in front of him again, his carriage full of the metals and crystals he needed.. He really needed to figure out how the heck it moved so fast when it was looking for things. Or maybe he just got lost in his thoughts a lot.

Concentrating, Jack managed to lift all of the parts this time, and bring them closer to himself. They floated lazily in a clump, and he slowly pulled out a part that he wanted. It was a small circuit board, and Jack stripped it and then rearranged it, adding some pieces from the floating pile. He made another battery, this one much more powerful, and hooked it up to the circuit board. He tried to take some more pieces from the pile with his mind, but the effort was too much. It was all he could do to set them on the ground safely.

Jack took some of the parts and twisted and shaped them into what he needed before assembling them into a piece of the device. This part of the portal opener would do the actual opening, working by ripping hole out of this universe and then ripping one back into it. Because of the way he made it, the holes would be connected like two ends of a tunnel that didn’t exist. The rest was much easier now that he wasn’t opening holes in the universe. All he had to do was add the GPS like device he made, set up the crystal lens, put in some buttons, and then cover it with metal so dirt or anything else won’t affect the workings of it.

Jack thought about his workshop and tried to tell the portal opener to open a portal there, not expecting it to work, and jumped in surprise when it answered back. It didn’t exactly speak, but he could feel it doing what he asked. It whirred in his hand, and then a small beam of light burst from the lens, ending a body’s length away. A small circle appeared at the end of the beam and quickly grew larger until it was touching the ground. It was about eight feet in diameter, and lined with what you’d expect of a portal: black space streaked with purple lightning, fading as it neared the center.

Through the portal Jack could see his workshop, the light still on from earlier. He lifted the three smallest cubes of metal and walked them through, impressed with what he built. The other five he had to lift individually, with each being too large to be paired with another. The second to biggest cube was slightly larger than a foot across, and caused Jack some trouble as he lifted it through the portal, and he was forced to let it drop loudly on the floor, resulting a yell from upstairs.

“Everything okay down there?” His mom’s voice was muffled slightly as she called down the stairs.

“Fine, I just dropped something!” Jack called back before he stepped back through the portal. He put both hands on the edge of the largest cube and pushed, moving it slightly. He kept pushing, taking small steps as he moved forward. As he moved closer to the portal, he felt a slight burning in his muscles, and assumed it to be from the effort he put into moving the cube. Jack stood up to relieve the burn, but it just grew more and more intense before disappearing without warning.

“Weird,” He muttered, rubbing his arms to see if the pain was still there, only to find that they felt perfectly normal. He started pushing again, and found that the cube felt much lighter than before. Jack stepped back in confusion and looked at his arms. He couldn’t be super strong, could he?

‘All supers are stronger and faster than normal humans’ popped unbidden into his mind. He’d read somewhere online, or heard it at school. Either way, it made sense. He wasn’t incredibly strong, like The Punisher, or The General. Jack bent down again, this time wrapping his arms around it. Standing up, the cube lifted with him, feeling slightly heavier than a bucket of water. He walked it in
to his workshop easily, and placed it quietly next to the others.

Jack opened up the smelter and began lowering all of the cubes in there, making sure they didn’t dent the bottom of it. When they were all in place, he locked the smelter and turned it on. It would take a while for all of the metals to melt, and Jack still hadn’t retrieved Fido or turned off the portal yet. He whistled, and Fido came running through the portal. Now that he had everything he wanted on this side of the portal he could close. Right as Jack pushed the button to close the portal, he remembered his bike. Eh, I don’t need it anyway.

The stairs creaked as Jack walked up them to the kitchen. His mom was sitting at a stool reading the newspaper, and his dad was eating a bowl of cereal.

“‘Morning,” Jack greeted, opening the fridge. He poured himself a glass of milk, and turned to look at the clock. He’d spent two hours at the dump, seeing that it was now almost nine o’clock.

“‘Morning. What were you doing down there this early?” His mom asked curiously.

“Oh, I was getting some things I needed from the dump. When I found out that they were too large to carry back, I created a portal opener, and walked them back.” Jack paused for a second before continuing. “Oh, and now I’m really strong. That’s normal for a super, right?”

His dad looked up from his cereal and answered. “Yeah, most supers end up being stronger and faster than a human. And I think I speak for both of us when I say: you made a portal opener?!?”

“Yeah, you want to see it?” He grinned at his parents faces as he pulled it out of his sweat pants pocket. “Name a place.”

“The Eiffel tower,” His mom blurted out.

“Okay.” Jack told the device to open a portal there, and held it lower to the ground so it wouldn’t rip a hole in the ceiling. The portal expanded rapidly in front of the fridge, hiding it from view. When it stopped expanding, the top of it barely went over his dad’s head. Through the portal, groups of people could be seen milling about, and past them the four legs of the tower were visible. Jack’s parents stepped forward and craned their necks up to see the top of the tower. One of the groups saw them and started shouting in some foreign language – French, perhaps? – and Jack quickly closed the portal.

“Incredible,” Jack’s dad whispered in awe. “And you just built that today?”

“Yeah, pretty cool, isn’t it? But it can only open a portal every five minutes or so, because it uses a lot of battery life.” Jack bobbed his head up and down while he spoke. “Anyway, I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

He walked briskly down the stairs to his workshop and found his smelter pouring the metal out into a pan. Steam rose from the metal as the pan cooled it off rapidly – another one of his projects. A few more minutes and the metal would be good to use for his suit. The design of the suit popped into Jack’s head again and he analyzed it, seeing how it would work, where things could be added. He smiled unconsciously as the possibilities crept into his head.

4 comments on “Growing Super: Chapter 7”

Wow. Based off his parents’ reactions, you seem to be aware of how powerful that is. I will still say though, be careful of power creep. The portal alone is a powerful enough ability to write an entire story around. You don’t want to make him so powerful that you have to pull out god-likes to stop him.

Will do. And I was planning on having the other supers be pretty powerful, too, so it would even things out a bit. In the future, he’ll fight other supers and it’ll even out the spectrum a bit, I think. I think that I should also put some limits on the battery life of the portal opener, so only one could be opened every certain amount of time.